Juggler is a juggling, hula-hooping skeleton for my
daughter-in-law - she is a juggling, hula-hooping criminalist!

The juggler was inspired by a whirligig, shown
here.
Whirligigs are basically wind-powered automata.

Here is mine:

Surfing Dog. This was inspired
by a paper automaton sold by Keith Newstead
here.

My wooden one is here:

Beach Bunny At the
request of a good friend, I built a girl jogging on the beach. This is really my first original automaton, and also my
first real attempt at wood carving (outside of the dogs above).

By the way, I carved this horse using an interesting technique I
came across - in an
old issue (from 1934) of PopularScience. The rough horse is made from
3 layers of quarter-inch plywood, cut with a scroll saw. The layers are glued
together and then finished as usual.

The horses were carved by
the same method as the Jumper, above, and go up and down using wheeled cam
followers tracking a ramp. The music is played back by pushing a hidden button -
it is recorded on the same electronic device used in a talking greeting card.

The south-pointing chariot was an ancient Chinese
two-wheeled vehicle that carried a movable pointer to indicate the south no
matter how the chariot turned. Preceding the compass, it may have been used for
land navigation at one time. It will continue to point in whatever direction it
is initially set to (not necessarily south).